Saturday, February 03, 2018

Why The Nunes Memo Is A Big Deal (And It's Not About Trump)

... because it shows that the FBI and DOJ were completely out of control.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC or FISA in the media these days) is the court to which our law enforcement agencies must plead to be permitted to surveil people. It is supposed to be independent of said law enforcement agencies and is there to protect us from overzealous govvies.

FISC presumes that the FBI is acting in good faith and is presenting them with all relevant information. When the FBI and DOJ lie to FISC, as they did in the Trump surveillance case by omitting the crucial information that they were being fed unsubstantiated rumors by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaigns, FISC is effectively taken out of the loop.

Without FISC, the FBI can do whatever it pleases, including spying on you and me, simply because someone in the FBI feels like it.

FBI agent: Some dude somewhere said you were selling cocaine to underage prostitutes.

Me: I've never done anything like that in my life! What made you think it was true?

FBI agent: Hey, we don't have time to corroborate every tip we get. It sounded good enough to us. Besides, we don't like you.

And that's that. This did, in fact, happen in the past which is why FISC was set up in the first place. Law enforcement agencies figured they could surveil "undesirable" American citizens by claiming they were agents of foreign governments. FISC was established to force the FBI to have to prove it.

For us Normals, living outside of the ever-crazier Beltway madhouse, this isn't about Trump or Comey or Hillary, it's about making sure the leash on the FBI and DOJ is on good and tight.

After getting a tip from ligneus and reading my blog, they figured a bazooka would be a good idea.

5 comments:

And people who cherish the freedom of America watch that the political parties don’t use the government to curtail that freedom, particularly if that government action is outside the bounds of equal protection before the law.